Happy 2018! From Virtual Reality to Business Reality to Everyday Use

It’s a brand new year and with it comes a renewed focus on showing our fellow educators just how powerful and practical it is to use VR as a tool in the classroom. This was the basis of a research paper we recently presented at the International Academy of Business & Public Administration Disciplines in Orlando, FL. Our presentation was entitled from Virtual Reality to Business Reality, and our goal was to introduce the Academy to how we were using Virtual Reality at the Florida A&M University’s School of Business and Industry.

At the center of our presentation was ThingLink’s 360/VR software which opened our school up to a more VR-friendly learning environment where students could produce groundbreaking projects. The project examples we showed were assigned by various professors throughout the FAMU School of Business. The students then received additional instruction executing them by attending a School of Business ThingLink 360/VR lab that was set up in a computer space at the school on a weekly basis.

The projects we presented ranged from students creating a VR Portfolio for their Business Communications Class to students in World cultures showing how restaurant franchises differ around the world. Our main goal was to show that not only were students introduced to Virtual Reality, they were able to grasp it in such a way, that through a simple software they could now become Virtual Reality content creators. This is what the Academy seemed to find most impressive, the students’ ability to leave with a VR product of their own.

Student Business Communications Portfolio

﻿

Student Project for World Cultures Course

And for us, that’s the message for 2018. A “Learn It And Do It” approach on our mission of introducing Virtual Reality even more on our campus and to other HBCUs worldwide. This has caused us to restructure our lab efforts for the semester. We are now taking a more mobile approach, setting up lab style trainings inside individual classrooms during various times. This allows us to have ongoing VR engagement in classes all over. The hope is that this expansion will become a universal model that can be adopted in Schools and Colleges throughout FAMU and ultimately produce more student VR Content Creators/Trainers campus-wide. Our research will involve monitoring the process from introduction to adoption to execution of using VR in coursework on a continuous basis.

There’s a busy year ahead of us, but as you can see, we are embracing it with open arms!

About the AuthorsThis post was compiled by L. Michelle Salvant and Dr. Kelley Bailey, ThingLink Certified Educators from Florida A & M University who will be ongoing contributors to this series.

Kelley Bolden Bailey, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor

School of Business and Industry

L. Michelle Salvant

LMichelleMedia, Inc., Owner

MBA Student

School of Business and Industry

GET INSPIRED

We are dedicated to providing our education community with inspiring ideas for teaching and learning with ThingLink through this blog. We hope you will continue to follow FAMU’s journey and read more ThingLink Certified Educator guest posts and subscribe to receive weekly updates highlighting our featured content.

L. Michelle Salvant and Dr. Kelley Bailey are ThingLink Certified Educators from Florida A & M University. They started by bringing ThingLink 360/VR to FAMu through a Bootcamp, and have established a lab on campus to help with seamless integration. We are excited to share their story as they work to fully implement teaching and learning with 360/VR and we are excited to help them bring ThingLink 360/VR to other Historically Black Colleges and Universities.